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No, I don’t celebrate Earth Day, or as my wife puts it – we have different religious beliefs. We certainly believe that mankind has the stewardship to look after the earth, but we don’t worship the creation more than the Creator. And that is what Earth Day and the overall green movement has become over the years.

I will make the prediction that people at Earth Day rallies will talk about the evils of man-made climate change. And you will probably also read news stories about the need of a carbon tax or cap and trade tax to limit the amount of CO2 mankind emits each year. These are easy predictions because Earth Day celebrants and the green movement have been calling for taxes on CO2 for years, when they aren’t too busy selling carbon indulgences. But CO2 isn’t an evil pollution that needs to be controlled, but it is necessary plant food. You could call CO2the magic gas that makes plants grow.

The supporters of global warming climate change have been riding high on the wave of popularity and prestige for years, especially since their patron saint, former Vice President Al Gore, got an Oscar for his documentary *snicker* “An Inconvenient Truth.” But the last few years have been pretty rocky for them. More and more scientists and concerned people have been questioning the data underlying the “settled science” of global warming climate change, but with the hacking of the emails and data from East Anglia, there has been a sea change. From their own emails and data, we now know that the science is far from settled. Visit Jo Nova’s site to get an idea of what Climategate has opened up. Here are two of my favorite points:

The Climategate emails confirmed that the science itself was suspect. That the doomsayers themselves couldn’t make the data work. That they were debating among themselves some of the same points that the sceptics raised, and were privately acknowledging that they didn’t have answers to the issues that the sceptics raised.

The Climategate emails confirmed that the doomsayers were so determined to hide their data from inquiring minds that they were prepared to break the law to hide it – and did break the law – by avoiding Freedom of Information requests.

These are not the actions of scientists seeking the truth. These are the actions of fanatic faithful struggling to suppress the attacks on their faith. The science behind global warming climate change is far from settled. And when the science doesn’t back up the believers, they are left to rely on their faith. I am not a global warming climate change believer, so on this Earth Day, I’ll be putting my faith in God, the Creator of earth, rather than worshipping His handiwork.

Americans who suggest Barack Obama should rot in hell are apparently deadly serious.

Nearly a quarter of Republicans believe the Democrat president ‘may be the Antichrist’, according to a survey.

Who actually asks these sort of questions? I do like the weasel word “may” in the quote, as in “Obama may be an American,” or “Obama may be the offspring of a Martian sheep pimp.” There’s lots of wiggle room in “may.” Anyway, any prominent person “may” be the antichrist, but we’d have to look at his actions and words to know. And as it says in 2 Thessalonians 2:4, the antichrist “sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” Can you think of a prominent politician whom people see as God?

An even greater number compared him to Hitler.

The corollary to Godwin’s law should have stopped this poll right there.

More than half of the Republicans quizzed by Harris Poll, 57 per cent, believed the president was secretly Muslim, something he has consistently denied.

His favoritism to Muslim nations and his antagonism to Israel surely doesn’t indicate anything. Nor does the time Obama mentioned “my Muslim faith.” George Stephanopoulos was quick to correct him. It was a simple mistake, and one I make all the time as mistakenly call myself a Hindu instead of Christian.

And 67 per cent of Republicans who responded believed Obama was a socialist, despite his central leanings.

With the passing of socialized medicine, I believe the answer should be closer to 100% now.

I’m not Catholic, so I don’t celebrate Lent or the practice of abstaining from meat on Friday. I’m not Jewish, so I don’t observe kosher laws. I’m not Muslim, so I don’t bow to Mecca five times a day to pray. And I’m not Green, so I don’t bother with Earth Hour or Earth Day. I’m not saying that these religious observances are bad, but since I’m not part of any of these faiths, their practices don’t apply to me.

And yes, being Green, in the capitalized sense of the word, is a religious observance with its own practices like Earth Day and Earth Hour. These high holy days of the Greens celebrate their deity, the earth. And in the case of Earth Hour, it is a celebration of self-denial similar to that of Lent as they turn off their lights for the span of one hour. Why bother with the 40 days of self-denial of Lent when you can feel the glow of self-righteousness with just one hour’s effort? So being Green is not only a religion, it’s a smug religion. How can I believe otherwise when the meaningless effort of turning off the lights for one hour is one of the central tenets of the faith? It is a literal plunging from light into darkness and done in a way that shows off one’s participation to others.

But not everyone who participates in Earth Hour does so out of religious fervor. Some people participate because of peer pressure, while others do so out of an attempt to curry favor with the faithful. They fear the backlash that may occur if they don’t participate visibly.

I’m not Green, so I don’t bother with Earth Hour. My friend calls it “Human Achievement Hour,” and he celebrates by turning on all his lights and basking in the glow of human achievement. That’s the kind of observance I can agree with because I believe in the power of human beings to make their lives better and rise above the limitations of a primitive existence.

Watch the following Earth Hour video, and tell me you don’t see the religious fervor in the faces of the faithful. This is clearly a missionary effort to reach out to the unbelieving.

“Do it for global warming.” And ignore that more and more evidence is coming out that human-caused global warming is bunk.

There has been much written and said about Islam in the last several years, but how much do you really know about Islam? Can you name the five pillars of Islam? Have you read the Qur’an? I must confess that I haven’t read it all either. So how can we learn more about Islam? There are non-Islamic sites that point out the fallacies and errors of Islam, but I am distrustful of each one I have seen, and I won’t link to any of them. I have seen too many anti-Mormon sites use the same ham-fisted bashing tactics that I find on most anti-Islam sites. For example, several sites that purport to tell the truth of Islam claim that everything is carefully researched and documented, but then they proceed to let the accusations fly without any documentation to back up their claims. And I have noticed several sites that have said they would not engage in any ad hominem attacks, but it doesn’t take long before the comments descend into bashing and snarky asides.

So assuming you want to do so, where do you go to learn about Islam? I suggest you go to the source and spend your time on the sites written by Muslims themselves, rather than by their detractors. Only after you gain an understanding of what Muslims believe as expressed by Muslims, then you can spend your time with the detractors.

I did a quick search and turned up three sites about Islam to start off with, but these are by no means the only or best sites. They are merely the first few that caught my eye.

Again, these sites aren’t the best, merely the first I turned up in some admittedly quick searches. And while they are written by Muslims, I don’t think they are the most effective Islamic apologist arguments when I can easily refute them. For example, one under the title “Islam: A Religion of Terror?” asks whether we should judge Islam by the actions of some of its followers:

One of the many short comings which has arisen in the West, is judging Islam by the conduct of a minority of its people. By doing this, segments of Western society have deliberately played off the desperate actions of many Muslims, and have given it the name of Islam. Such behaviour is clearly not objective and seeks to distort the reality of Islam. For if such a thing was done – judge a religion by the conduct of its people – then we too could say that all Christianity is about is child molesting and homosexuality [1] whilst Hinduism was all about looting and breaking up mosques [2].

The two numbers refer to the following footnotes:

[1] By using the many cases of child abuse and homosexuality by priests, Such a generalisation about Christianity could be made
[2] By using the incident of the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodya, India in December 1992 by Hindu zealots, such generalisations could be made about Hinduism

Were the “many cases of child abuse and homosexuality by priests” perpetrated in the name of Christianity while the priests chanted “God is great”, or were they the acts of individual sinful men? And if one act of Hindu destruction is sufficient example to typify an entire religion, then the 8,500+ acts of violence committed by Muslims since 9/11/2001 are 8500 times more damning of Islam.

There are many examples of Muslims committing violence and murder in the name of Islam, and often they chant “God is great” while doing so. Clearly they are committing these acts as a form of religious devotion, but is all of Islam to blame for the despicable acts of a few? No, the person who holds the bloody knife is to blame for the death. And what about the people who stand by and chant “Allahu Akbar”? It is clear that they are willing accomplices to the murder. What about an imam who does nothing violent himself, but who preaches bloody jihad in England? Does he share in some responsibility for the violence caused by those who were inspired by his hatred? And what culpability do Muslims have when they stand by quietly and say nothing to condemn the murders committed by their coreligionists? In Latin, “qui tacet consentire videtur” means “he who is silent is taken to agree”; by their silence, are they not consenting to the violence? Frankly, I wouldn’t go that far. It’s very possible that Muslim silence comes from fear of being the next victim, not from tacit consent. After all, the Ummah has shown a remarkably low flash point for anger and violence. Pope Benedict XVI quotes someone from centuries earlier questioning the justice and virtue of Islam, and Muslims around the world blow up and call for his head — literally. Personally, I cannot accept that Islam is the “Religion of Peace” as some people say. It has proven by the actions of many of its followers that it cannot claim that title.

But don’t take my word for it. Go take a look for yourself at what Islam preaches and what it practices, and come up with your own informed opinion. After all, isn’t it high time you learned about Islam?

Since former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is running for President, more attention is being paid to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members, commonly called Mormons. Recently PBS broadcast two two-hour shows about Mormons, and people are using Romney’s religion to bash him.

I guess it’s time I wrote about polygamy and the Church, since it’s in the news again. At this point, I need to point out the obvious to the people in the back who are not paying attention — these are my opinions. I don’t presume to speak officially for the Church in the same way that I don’t speak officially for the company I work for. Now that the legalistic CYA is done–curse this litigious society–it’s on to our story. Drudge is reporting some quotes from a recent interview of Romney by Mike Wallace that will be broadcasted on 60 MINUTES this weekend. Here’s one paragraph from Drudge’s flash.

Romney acknowledges that voters may have a problem with his religion’s history of polygamy. “That’s part of the history of the church’s past that I understand is troubling to people,” he says. The practice, outlawed before 1900, is equally troubling to him. “I have a great-great grandfather. They were trying to build a generation out there in the desert and so he took additional wives as he was told to do. And I must admit, I can’t image [sic] anything more awful than polygamy,” he tells Wallace.

I don’t have a problem imagining something more awful than polygamy. Slavery is worse. Hutus and Tutsis machetteing each other is worse. A planet-killer asteroid wiping out all life on Earth would be worse. And I imagine being nibbled to death by ducks would be a real bummer, too.

But is there something intrinsically wrong with polygamy? I’d have to say no since the Bible records many people who were polygamists, and these weren’t bad people, either. Both Abraham and Jacob had multiple wives, and the Bible records them as being godly men. King David also had multiple wives, and when the prophet Nathan confronted David, he confirmed that the wives were given to David by God. It was in the killing of Uriah the Hittite and taking his wife where David sinned.

So if God gave these men multiple wives, how can it be wrong? The key is recognizing the difference between participating in polygamy because God commands it, and doing so because you want to. In the Book of Mormon, Jacob chastised the people because they were taking multiple wives and using the fact that David did so as their excuse.

Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none… For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.

So marriage is defined as one man and one woman, unless God commands otherwise. It took a revelation from God to instruct Joseph Smith to start polygamy, and it took a revelation from God to finish it. That revelation came to Wilford Woodruff, the fourth president and prophet of the Church. And since the command to practice polygamy was rescinded at the end of the 19th century, the LDS Church has officially stopped supporting polygamy. Any member of the Church who advocates for or practices polygamy will be excommunicated from the Church. The Church even issued a press release back in 2005 about linking active polygamists with the Church.

Recent news reports regarding various issues related to the practice of polygamy, especially focusing on groups in Southern Utah, Arizona and Texas, have used terms such as “fundamentalist Mormons,” “Mormon sect” and “polygamous Mormons” to refer to those who practice polygamy.

There is no such thing as a “polygamous” Mormon. Mormon is a common name for a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Church discontinued polygamy more than a century ago. No members of the Church today can enter into polygamy without being excommunicated. Polygamist groups in Utah, Arizona or Texas have nothing whatsoever to do with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Since it has been over a century since the practice of polygamy was stopped in the Church, why bring it up now? Every time someone in the a U.S. Army gets interviewed, are they asked about the Wounded Knee Massacre? Do reporters bring up the USS Maine explosion when Spain is mentioned? Is Jack the Ripper an issue discussed when London is in the news? The answer to these three examples is no, there is no need to bring up these events from a century past unless the subject is germane to the discussion. So why is polygamy a germane subject for Mitt Romney now? The simple answer is that the media doesn’t like Republicans in general and Romney in particular, so anything that could be brought up to tar him with past events is allowed.

I saw a “Coexist” sticker while taking my wife out to dinner last night. If you haven’t seen one of these stickers before, they use different religious and cultural symbols together to spell the word “Coexist.” I have a problem with this sticker, but not because I dislike differences. Frankly, I don’t have any trouble coexisting with people who look, act, and believe in ways different from me. While our similarities make us comfortable, I have found that our differences make life interesting. Imagine combining all the different ethnicities of humanity together like some huge Will It Blend? test. What would we look like? (And yes, I’m talking about intermarriage, not something that looks like bloody goo. Yech.) Since over half of the world is Oriental or Indian, the results of our thought experiment might probably end up looking something like a darker-skinned Michelle Saram. [Image 1][Image 2] Michelle’s parents are Indian and Chinese.

I think I could live with that.

Jerry Jaspar sells the “Coexist” sticker he created at his PeaceMonger.org site along with other items. He admits that while it is tempting to make his site “all positive – all the time,” he just can’t help making fun of President Bush. But it’s OK for him to do that because as he writes, “You are NOT my president!” He’s all for peace, unity, and happy coexistence, but he doesn’t want any of those things with President Bush. Oh, and money. He certainly wants your money. By the way, that aroma you’re picking up is the fine scent of hypocrisy in the morning.

No, the problem I have with the “Coexist” sticker is that not everyone can tolerate differences; no, not even Jerry Jaspar. And it is this lack of tolerance of others that is the ultimate problem with this sticker. There is a large group of people, spread around the world, that has shown a distinct lack of ability to accept the differences of others. No, not all of them, but a too-large group has shown — in words and actions — that it has a problem coexisting peacefully with its neighbors, and instead demands that others change to conform to its ideals. I won’t point to any specific names, but I will give a short list of places where this lack of coexistence has been an issue, and close with a photograph that clearly sums up an attitude that suggests conquest over coexistence.

Here’s the list: Darfur, Thailand, Indonesia, Chechnya, the Balkans, and pretty much any part of the Middle East as it relates to Israel. And here’s the picture:

The “Coexist” sticker is preaching to the choir since it is directed, in English, to people who already tolerate and/or embrace differences. I will believe differently about Islam when I start seeing stickers that say تعايش in places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. But until then, how can we coexist peacefully with those who will not coexist with us?

UPDATE (7/26/2011 1:35:00 PM): Updated the link to go to the April 7th, 2007 image taken from archive.org. Just to be clear, I haven’t met or spoken with Jerry Jaspar. I only have his words and products to go by.

“But there are so many people I know who are gay and love their religion. From my point of view I would ban religion completely.

“Organised religion doesn’t seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it’s not really compassionate.”

As I see it, Elton John is up in arms against religion because it is his personal ox being gored. And I’m sure that when he talks about religion, he’s really talking about Christianity since that is the majority religion of England, Elton John’s native country.

So religious people are actually hateful and not really compassionate, because that’s the main focus of religion, don’t you know. All this stuff and nonsense of “love thy neighbor” is just camouflage for a seething cauldron of hatred and intolerance. Elton John’s life must be a real nightmare, what with the daily pogroms against him and his partner. He talks about the horrors of his life in the same interview:

“I never get those problems. I don’t know what it is with me, people treat me very reverently.

Referring to his “wedding” to long-term partner David Furnish, he said: “It was the same when Dave and I had our civil union – I was expecting the odd flour bomb and there wasn’t.

The horror! The constant humiliation and abuse! How can he stand it? Uh. Wait. He’s not suffering at all. I thought he said that religion promotes hatred and spite against gay people like himself. Curious. Could it just be that he’s ranting over nothing?

Nah. I’m sure he’s onto something here. The common phrase of “hate the sin, but love the sinner” can’t possibly be the statement of love and compassion that it seems. It must mask the feeling of “hate the sin, and drive a stake in the heart of the sinner” that religious people must really feel.

After all, Elton John tells us that we religious types are just so full of hate.

Here is a bit of truth for you: in any conflict, the aggressor sets the rules. Let me explain. If two men are fighting under Marquess of Queensberry rules, then their match will continue under those rules unless and until one of them decides to break the rules and pull out a knife. At that point, the idea of a “fair fight” goes right out the window. By pulling out a blade, the aggressor has upped the ante to include knives, so all the self-imposed rules about boxing gloves and no hitting below the belt vanish.

If a friendly karate sparring match becomes a full-contact fight, the opponent is fully justified to use full force to put down the aggressor and end the fight. This is true for nations as well. The Geneva Convention bans the use of poisonous gas in a conflict, and in a hypothetical conflict between the U.S. and France, both sides would be bound by that agreement as signatories. But if France were to fire off some mustard gas at U.S. troops, the U.S. would no longer be bound by the Geneva Convention.

The aggressor sets the rules, but the position of “aggressor” is not limited to just one side or the other, and it may flip back and forth during a conflict. One boxer may start hitting below the belt. The other may start biting and head-butting. The first could escalate to using a folding chair, and the second could respond by pulling out a knife. In each instance, the one who escalates the fight is the aggressor and has set the new level of acceptable violence.

And war is violence, pure and simple. But we don’t fight wars purely and simply. If we did, we wouldn’t bother with things like guided bombs or calling off strikes because civilians are around. We’d just carpet-bomb a city to rubble if it meant getting the one person we want, or using a wave of nuclear explosions to turn a country into a sea of glass. The U.S. military (and, by extension, the civilian leaders over the military) have shown an amazing amount of self-control. Our forces have been very careful to avoid unnecessary casualties. I saw a video of a helicopter pilot guiding a missile to a truck containing known terrorists brandishing weapons. As the missile streaked toward the truck, a car filled with innocent people pulled alongside the terrorists as both vehicles waited to pass over a bridge. The pilot could have taken out the terrorists, but he would have almost certainly killed or hurt the passengers in the other car, so he ditched the missile into the river. That is the level of professionalism under which our military men and women are expected to work.

While al-Zarqawi was alive, he was responsible for a wave of beheadings, including the gruesome death of Nick Berg–who died screaming while al-Zarqawi sawed at his neck. Clearly al-Zarqawi was the aggressor, but the U.S. has not changed its strategy to include beheadings. Our military has decided not to stoop to the level of these terrorist thugs. But I think there is one place where our response should change, based on the acts of the aggressors who are fighting us. These thugs have no problem using their religion as a tool to fight the U.S. and the West, so I think we ought to change our tactics to include using their religion as a weapon against them. Normally religion would be hands off, but as the aggressors, they changed the rules.

Now imagine this scene: several camera crews are brought to the morgue where al-Zarqawi’s body is housed. They take close-up pictures of his face and known identifying marks to establish his identity. Then al-Zarqawi’s naked body is rubbed down with pig fat, and liquid lard is pumped into his stomach. His head is cut off with a knife, his body is chopped up, and the remains are fed to pigs and wild dogs. When the animals have eaten all they can stand of him, they are slaughtered and their corpses, their filth, and any leftover thug-bits are gathered up and dumped far out at sea. Under Muslim belief, these actions would be sufficient to deny al-Zarqawi his 72 virgins in paradise, deny anyone access to a gruesome relic, and serve as a deterrent to thug-wannabes who don’t want to miss out on their paradisiacal pleasures.

Would that ever happen? No. Would we be justified in doing that to his corpse? I say yes. These thugs have changed the rules by bringing beheadings, mutilations, and religion into this conflict. The actions described above would be playing by their rules. I think that, at the very least, we should announce that we will bury the corpses of known terrorists with pig parts. And that includes any and all bits we can scrape up of the remains of a homicide bomber.

Call me evil and vindictive if you like, but I don’t care. The nutjobs have chosen to change the rules by bringing their religion into the fight.

With the recent battles over the Ten Commandments in Alabama, the way the Christmas holiday is morphing into “Winter Festival,” and the panicked way liberals chant “separation of Church and State” at every chance, you’d think that Christianity and other religions were a massive threat to your safety and liberty. Have you noticed that the phrase is normally given a high level of importance by calling it “the Constitutionally mandated separation of Church and State?” But that phrase does not appear in the Constitution. It was penned by Thomas Jefferson years later in a letter. The part about religion that does appear, when liberals get around to reading the Constitution, is in the 1st Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

But what does that mean? It’s simple, really. Congress can do nothing either in favor of or against a religion. The Founding Fathers had seen the way state-sponsored religion, in the forms of the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, had disrupted the peace of England. Up to the reign of Henry VIII, the state religion of England was Roman Catholic, but when Pope Clement VII nullified Henry’s second divorce and excommunicated him, Henry broke with the Catholic Church. Parliament declared Henry “Supreme Head of the Church of England” in 1534. Henry’s son, Edward VI, succeeded him in 1547 but died shortly in 1553, and this left England with the choice of two of Henry’s daughters: Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I. The people supported Mary as queen, and she promptly made the Catholic Church the state religion again. This was not done peacefully, and to this day she is often referred to as “Bloody Mary.” Five years after the death of Edward VI, Mary Tudor died childless, and her half-sister Elizabeth I became queen. She removed the Catholic Church from power and reestablished the Church of England, albeit with closer theological ties this time and less bloodshed.

All in all, these were times of turmoil and death in England, and the country lost much political power in Europe along with its last properties in France. It is no wonder that the Founding Fathers did not want to establish a national church in the newly-formed United States. They had seen the horrors that can come from one.

But did they restrict the individual states from making an official state religion within their borders? No. They did not. “Blasphemy!” screams the modern liberal. But it is true. The 1st Amendment states that Congress shall make no laws either for or against religion–but Congress is not the states. The 9th and 10th Amendments specify that any rights not already given to the United States (the federal government) or expressly forbidden the states or people, belong to the states and people. This means that the right to form a state religion does belong to the states. The Founding Fathers wanted the individual states to have enough autonomy to work out their own success. You may think of the United States today as fifty state laboratories each working away trying to do their best. If something works well in one state, it will be noticed and copied by others. Likewise, if something fails miserably it will be rejected by other states–well, that is, unless the failure is propped up by liberals. So by what right can a federal judge order a state judge to remove the Ten Commandments from a courthouse in Alabama? If you said “none,” you are correct. Remember, “Congress shall make no law” applies to the federal government, but how can it apply to a state and a member of the judicial branch? The constant and ill-informed carping of “separation of Church and State” by liberals has muddied the waters in this debate, and it is clear that people do not understand the underlying reasons why the Founding Fathers put this amendment in place any more.

Redefining a word or phrase and then legislating from the new definition is a common tactic among the liberal left. The Founding Fathers are plain about the purpose of the 1st Amendment in their writings. They wanted a freedom of religion to prevent it from being meddled with as it was in 16th-century England. But modern-day liberals have redefined this as freedom from religion. And now that they have redefined this in the minds of the people, they want the judiciary to enforce their new definition. You see this in the constantly outraged left decrying anything Christmas- or God-centered. A nativity scene is now an establishment of religion, and saying “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance is somehow a violation of people’s civil rights. When the Breen Elementary School in Rocklin, California posted “God Bless America,” the religion-hating ACLU objected to this “hurtful, divisive message.” This mistaken idea even leads to such silliness as the Golden Corral restaurant in Tyler, Texas posting “Bless America” because adding “God” to that phrase might offend someone. God save us from the perpetually offended!

But this is a good thing, the liberals tell us, because we do not want to have some religion forcing its beliefs on us. That would be just terrible, they cry. Really? How many laws have been written because of religion? Other than local “blue laws” regarding liquor and shopping on Sunday, can you name any religious laws enforced in the United States? But there is a group of people who have forced their beliefs on us via the law and judiciary: liberals.

Want to buy a 3 1/2-gallon toilet so you don’t have to flush two or three times? You can’t. Liberals don’t want you to flush away that much water. Want to buy an efficient freon-based refrigerator? You can’t. Liberals don’t want you to destroy the ozone with nasty CFCs. Never mind that CFCs are at least four times heavier than air, so how are they making it up to the ozone layer in the first place? Want to drive a large car? You can’t. Liberals have mandated the MPG and energy efficiency of cars, so America no longer produces the large, powerful cars of yesteryear. On every front liberals have been telling us what to do, where to go, how to eat, what to buy, how to believe. But they scream and pitch a fit whenever someone brings up the idea that God might be important in our lives. Why? Because they cannot attack our God-given rights if God still exists. But once God is out of the picture, then our God-given rights become government-given rights. And what government giveth, government also taketh away. Are you comfortable with that? I am not.